I was introduced to Blender by a friend of mine, then in college for 3D animation. I was getting into Web design and needed the best 3D program I could get at the lowest price for a website I was building for a local industrial band. He told me that before he got the loans to buy Maya he used Blender and that I should check it out. I was blown away at what a free program could do (Blender pushed me into the Open Source world). 

I made some robots for the website i needed, but I had to use a PhotoShop-like program to make it look good as the program was just too hard to learn. That was 2004 and every year I would go back to Blender wanting to learn the program, but I would just get lost in the GUI. Sure, with effort I could get small tasks accomplished, but every time was like starting over.

Meanwhile, my friend, now out of school, worked with Maya and 3D Max making video games. Last summer I bought 5 or 6 books on Blender, determined to “get it this time.” He thought I was an idiot. That was Blender 2.49 and I didn’t get it. I started thinking my friend was right – I gave up and looked into getting something else but didn’t (my wife and I had twins, so any budget I had was shot).

Then Blender 2.5 came out.

I bought a 3D magazine and saw an image of Blender that I didn’t recognize. I downloaded the newest release and was blown away – the nightmare GUI was over! I had been working with After Effects for about a month and was loving it, but was bothered by the lack of true 3D for some of the things I needed. I decided to try yet again to learn Blender with a new hope in my heart. I quickly began doing the things with the program I could only dream of before in the first few days.

Blender’s changes from 2.5 and up have revolutionized the program, in my mind. As artists, we grab a hold of what we can learn and use quickly. I didn’t go to college for 3D animation, so I don’t have any more time to learn 3D Max or Maya or whatever than I do Blender, but I can afford Blender. That’s why I kept coming back to it, and my faith in the open source movement has been rewarded.